The 7 Secrets of the Prolific Writer's Block (23 page)

1. Conceptualization (a.k.a. note-taking or “noodling around”)

2. Planning and outlining (a little more structured than above)

3. Research

4. First Draft

5. Revision(s)

6. Final Draft

7. Submission(s)

8. Cash the Check (for freelance and other writers who get paid)

Note how
the stage most people think comes first—First Draft—actually appears halfway down
. A major cause of underproductivity and blocks is that the writer omits, or skimps on, the earlier stages—which means she is trying to write something she doesn’t sufficiently comprehend.

Trying to write a first draft without first spending adequate time on stages 1–3 is like planting a garden without preparing the soil, or building a house atop a shaky foundation: a risky proposition at best. Sure, once in a while a piece will just seem to write itself. But that’s usually because we’ve either thought about it a lot or figured out a link between it and other topics we’ve thought a lot about. So the early stages were, in fact, done, only perhaps at a different time. (Also, the confidence that comes from writing something familiar helps us resist perfectionism.)

Obviously, the stages differ from project to project, and writer to writer. Some projects demand extensive research, others only a little. Some writers create detailed outlines, while others work from the seat of their pants (the famous “plotters” versus “pantsers” divide). And some writers do the stages mostly linearly, while others jazzily intermingle them. Whatever system works for you, and the particular project you’re working on, is the right one.

It’s helpful to remember that
most of us enjoy working on some stages more than others, and those are the stages we tend to get stuck on if we’re prone to procrastination
. That’s procrastination as a toxic mimic of productive work (Section 1.8), and it happens especially with first draft, research, and revision.

Conversely, many writers dislike, or are afraid of, certain stages and try to avoid them. These are, typically, the first draft and submission, as well as marketing and other business “chores.”

You probably know if you’re overworking or underworking a stage due to procrastination, but if you’re unsure, ask your mentors. If the diagnosis is, indeed, procrastination, use timed exercises (Section 2.14) to overcome your fears.

Armed with the knowledge of the stages of a writing project, you can now use your writercopter to move not just through space (the landscape of your project), but time: more specifically, back to a prior stage whenever you’re stuck. I recommend moving back to conceptualization, planning, outlining, or drafting, but
not
research because it is a frequent vehicle for procrastination.

Another important productivity technique is to
identify the easiest parts of your project so that, when all else fails, you can work on them
. When, during the writing of this book, I was severely distracted or demotivated, I worked on the bibliography.
1
Why not? It had to get done, and doing it empowered me and helped me get re-motivated as soon as possible.

You can do this temporally, too. The earliest and latest drafts of a project are usually the easiest, because the earliest ones tend to be free and fun (if you don’t get perfectionist), and the later ones tend to have most of their elements in place, so that what you’re doing is mainly line edits. So if you’re working on multiple projects, or a project with multiple sections, all in different phases of completion, do “earlies” and “lates” when feeling distracted or otherwise unmotivated; save the tough middle drafts, where you’re trying to make order out of chaos, for when you’re feeling fresh and energetic.

1
See www.hillaryrettig.com.

T
here’s a natural tendency to start each writing session by revisiting the beginning of your piece, which means that the beginning tends to get overworked. And then, if you’ve got a deadline (which you should, even if it’s one you set yourself), you wind up rushing through the middle and end.

Although the writercopter can help, it itself is often biased toward landing at or near the beginning of a piece.

Correct for this tendency by devoting around half of your writing sessions to working backwards in the piece, meaning you start by writing or revising the last section, then move on to the section before that, and then the section before that, etc. Utilize freewriting, nonlinearity, the copter, and all your other tempo-building techniques, but use them while working backwards from The End.

I
know, I know: It can be
terrifying
to show your work, particularly when it’s at an early stage. However, this is one of the single best things you can do to boost your productivity. It helps you:

1. Combat any shame you have about your work. Given that shame is a powerful catalyst of perfectionism and other barriers (Chapter 6), this is crucial.

2. Get advice (including on tough writing problems) that accelerates your progress.

3. Build an engaged audience who will later purchase and promote your writing (Section 8.8).

These are powerful benefits, and so you’ve really got to show your work—but, of course, be selective, since there’s no use showing it to someone clueless or cruel. Choose your critique partners and alpha readers (Section 3.11) carefully.

Reading aloud, either to yourself or to others, is another powerful technique. When I do it, I usually find an excruciating number of painfully obvious errors that I somehow missed through twenty silent readings.

T
his is where things get interesting. Minimize your perfectionism, resource yourself abundantly, and use the techniques described in this chapter, and writing will start to get
really
easy. You’ll be able to start a writing session with a minimum of fuss, and achieve the inspired “flow” state almost effortlessly.

Soon, you’ll find yourself starting to write at times and in places you never dreamed possible:

Fifteen minutes between meetings? Without even thinking about it, you whip out your laptop or notebook.

A thirty-minute train commute? You used to read or listen to music, but those activities now hold less appeal. Why settle for merely being distracted when you can become engaged and transported via your writing?

Family reunion with all kinds of
mishegos
? Writing is no longer an extra burden, but a refuge—just as it was, perhaps, when you were a kid.

Wow, do the pages pile up when you add in an extra fifteen minutes there, an extra half-hour here.

Y
ou don’t even have to work at the final major technique for increasing tempo. With time and experience, writing should become easier and your tempo should automatically increase. That’s because you will have (a) learned a lot about the topics you like to write about, (b) optimized your writing process and techniques, and (c) accumulated most of your needed resources (material, psychological, community). Eventually, you’ll probably be able to just sit down and almost effortlessly spin out competent, and sometimes excellent, writing. This is called mastery, and it’s a terrific thing. You gain a little of it every time you write, actually, and can speed the process along by:

1. Getting a lot of training;

2. Working with lots of mentors (Section 3.11); and

3. Working as consciously as possible, and being alert to (and seeking out) opportunities to learn and grow.

Here, as elsewhere, a perfectionist is likely to try to erect barriers to success and happiness. If you think work is supposed to be an epic struggle and are suspicious of success when it comes “too easily,” then you are likely to mistrust and fight mastery.

Mastery is one of the great rewards of the productive life, and so you should learn to recognize, and celebrate, yours.

Take Shorter Breaks and Focus Breaks on Relaxation and Recovery.
Don’t rush your breaks, but don’t let them devolve into procrastination, either (see next tip). Keep them focused on relaxation and recovery actions such as stretching, meditation, a cup of tea, or a walk in the garden. Avoid information-centered activities such as email, reading (Web or paper), or television, which often don’t represent a real break from mind-work, and which are also often vehicles for procrastination.

Time Your Breaks.
When you’re just overcoming perfectionism, you need long breaks—for instance, 24-hour breaks in between each five-to-ten-minute writing session—to recover from the work of managing perfectionist terror.

As you become prolific, your writing sessions should become longer and your breaks shorter. There was a time I kept two timers open on my computer desktop: one to time my writing periods and the other to time my breaks. I aimed to take no more than half an hour of accumulated breaks for every three hours I spent writing (3.5 hours total).

You know how time goes faster when you’re having fun, and slower when you’re not? Well, I can assure you that
no
time flies faster than break time. Because of procrastination’s sneaky, stealthy nature, you can take a bathroom break and then read a few headlines—and wham! An hour’s flown by.

It helps if you determine which activities suck up the most time. Reading blogs or social media is dangerous enough for me, but responding to a blog post or status update can derail a writing session more than anything, so I know to strenuously avoid those particular tempting activities. For you, the danger might lie in making phone calls, watching TV, or doing housework.

You should also time any “breaks” you take before starting work. One of the three productivity behaviors from Section 2.13 is to sit right down and write at your appointed time. Always aim to do that, but if you are compelled to do some housework or Web-surfing first, time that activity so you know exactly how much you’re procrastinating.

Get enough sleep.
Next to perfectionism itself, fatigue may be the top degrader of tempo. The prolific people I know prioritize getting a good night’s sleep.

Use deadlines.
Not as a whip, but as a productivity tool. Even if you don’t have an actual deadline imposed by an outside authority, you should set your own; if your project is big, you should set many smaller sub-deadlines. Make sure all your deadlines are reasonable—modest, even—so as to prevent perfectionism. And make them meaningful by involving a critique partner and others (Section 3.12) who will hold you gently accountable.

Expand on recalcitrant stuff.
If you’re having trouble with a piece, try writing about it as expansively as possible. Often when we stall, it’s because we’re trying to force too much meaning into too small a space, or conflateing two or more points that need to be handled separately. (Sometimes what you thought was a small point really needs to be a chapter—or an entire book!) So let some light and air into the topic, and see where it wants to go.

Delete recalcitrant stuff.
The other solution for recalcitrance is, paradoxically, to delete. If a section simply can’t be made right, then try jettisoning what you’ve written and either rewriting it from scratch, or seeing if the piece works without it. (Which it does a lot of the time.)

Jettisoning is one of writing’s great pleasures, so enjoy it. Ignore any perfectionist voices telling you, “You worked so hard and now you’re deleting it! So much wasted time!” False starts, detours, and dead ends are ordinary parts of a healthy and uninhibited creative process.

Track your progress.
If you write long or complex pieces, you will almost certainly need some way of tracking progress, not just to manage the project but to keep yourself motivated. When I wrote my book
The Lifelong Activist
, I used a spreadsheet to record daily and cumulative word counts and completed chapters. The spreadsheet contained both a colorful line graph, which helped me chart daily word counts, and a colorful cone chart to tally completed chapters. You can bet that the kindergartner in me got a thrill whenever the colorful graph and chart rose a notch.

When I started writing this book, I no longer felt the need to track daily word counts and chapters. So I simply tracked the chapters I completed.

Just do whatever works for you.

Add a physical component to your writing process.
Some writers catalyze their productivity by creating multicolored plot diagrams or project plans; others by creating scrapbooks filled with pictures (from magazine ads and elsewhere) related to their characters and setting.

On a more prosaic level, I have often been amazed at how often, when I’m stuck, simply printing out the piece and laying the pages out on a big table, and then going at it old school with pencil, scissors, and glue stick (i.e., cutting and pasting), helps resolves things. (Part of that, of course, is that I get to see the whole piece at once, and not the few paragraphs that show on my screen.)

Slow down.
I’ll end this chapter on a paradoxical note. Building tempo is like any other writing goal: you must achieve it “accidentally” while focusing on your process and immersing yourself in your text. Flaubert’s maxim about success being a consequence instead of a goal applies here, too.